Under a Black Rainbow

  The title of this post is a quote by Susan Sontag, and I'm sure she meant her actual library rather than anything metaphorical.  I, however, am stealing it and adopting it and intending it to be metaphorical. I'm changing the meaning of 'my library' to mean the collection of works that I have myself created. I am often moved by a word, a thought, an emotion, or a person when I am called to create something and birth it out into the world.  It's usually pretty easy for me to point to a story, or a line therein, or a painting, or a song (which prompted a new DJ mix) and say "this is who/what/where inspired me to make this thing you now get to enjoy." This library of mine - my collected works - often come from a place of longing, of wishing to fill some void inside me. They are the physical stories of things that never were, might possibly be, or will never come to fruition. My longings are legion and as long as my hand can give voice to those longings, the...

This argument of the cold digital screen vs. the warm analog page? It's bullshit. And don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Both have the potential to be educators and truth-tellers; both also have the potential to be flat-out liars to you.  I've experienced a few things this week that have lit up a few of my synapses. It's not often that something makes me sit up and take stock of my own position on a subject, but this week it's happened twice.  The first came in video meme form; a comparison of the money spent trying to help clean up the island of Maui vs. that spent on the defense of Ukraine. It was...a heavy-handed and inaccurate argument, that somehow we were spending more on a foreign country (Ukraine) as opposed to spending less on a state of our own union (Hawaii) that had just experienced some pretty severe natural trauma.  The final conclusion showed an ashen version of Maui from last week versus the video of some totally nice freeway somewhere in Europe (a...

I feel very piecemeal these days.  Though there is structure and foresight involved, maybe it's more that the results I'm seeing are piecemeal rather than those of my efforts. The writing is slowly coming back. My health is very quickly returning to a better place, both physically and mentally (emotionally too, but that's a constant work in progress, or at least should be). Time no longer feels like a mountain to ascend, but much of that is probably me forcing myself to break my monastic habits for the summer knowing they'll return in better, healthier ways once the weather cools, my new deck is built, and my swim spa is installed. I'm prepping for a healthier, more creative cocooning this winter than I've had in previous years.  In my last entry, I spoke about buying a new standing desk, and its inclusion into my daily work life has been a welcome boon to my hip and back issues from sitting so much. I'm currently on vacation, but I had an under-desk treadmi...

Me and clarity have been having a war of attrition for awhile now. It's not something I recognized until I was more cognizant of the effects my grief was having on me, but the revelation was a stark one and it slapped me across the face when it arrived.  The basic building blocks of a home (whether it be an actual house or an apartment or a condo, whatever) consist of ways to hide the things you own. Closets, drawers, cabinets, attics...I had taken these things for granted in my previous lives, favoring storage over display in almost every sense of the word. I felt like I was keeping things organized and clean. But like a solid, but obvious, metaphor for the rest of my life, I was simply hiding the important things from being seen by others.  When I first moved into my home, I filled the closets and the cabinets and the drawers all the way they should've been filled, the way we're all used to them being inhabited by the objects we've accumulated along the way. I had got...

Lost people get lost in things. I don't know why it took me so long to make the connection.  Or maybe I did and I just ignored it...which, considering the last couple of years? Almost certainly the case. I've been simultaneously aloof and so fucking aware that the two have become hard to separate. Some real left brain / right brain shit. Two sides, same coin, yada yada.  It explains a lot though, this physics of the self. If I find myself deficient in something in my life, I fill that void with something tangible and excessive. Lose a lover in your 20s and maybe you end up shoving your nose in some books for another 7 years. Get jumped by a homeless person twice your size and maybe you end up leaving a city for a completely different one...but you carry that traumatic moment with you for a good long while. A lost person gets lost in the process of losing themselves in order to move on.  It's me. I'm lost people. And I'm the one getting lost in things. I'm the on...

At the risk of poking the universal bear, it feels like I'm on the other side of this grief that's been absolutely kicking my ass for two years.  And sure, it'll return during an inappropriate moment or it'll keep me up some random night in the future, but for now? It's like the summer sun burning off a morning fog that's overstayed its welcome by several months too many.  There are two lessons I've learned in this...two main ones, anyway; I'm sure there are a million others scattered throughout the digital pages of this blog: You have to find time to sit with your grief. It will end when it's done with you, not the reverse.  I'm the king of throwing myself into new moments or projects purely so I can avoid dealing with things that are bigger than I am, the things that remain out of my control no matter how hard I might try to change them. This ain't that, though doing so anyway *did* elicit some interesting new happenings in my life.  But th...

Another quiet month for the reading, but a massively busy month in terms of getting out, traveling to Detroit, trying to break my monk-like solitude in the house. I'm actively working to get out more this summer now that I'm feeling like grief has finally left this body of mine.  I've also been VERY active in getting my weight and eating under control. I'm down into the 240s now, have added some new, heavier weights to my daily workouts, and am feeling much more like myself than I have in quite some time. I'm not trying to get too excited, but I'd love for this summer to be a much more enjoyable one than the previous few have been.  *     *     *     *     * APRIL (3 books | 1,193 pgs) 40.) The Stygian Library (System Manual, 161 pgs) 41.) The New Mutants Epic Collection, Vol. 7: Cable (Graphic Novel, 496 pgs) 42.) Joe Golem: Occult Detective Omnibus (Graphic Novel, 536 pgs) ( 5,801 )